Container vendor Docker Inc is in the process of raising a new $75 million round of funding, as the company aims to grow its business and effectively compete against a growing array of different container and micro-services vendors.

On Oct. 6, Docker Inc filed a disclosure with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), revealing a few details about the in-progress funding round. The total offering amount for the equity funding round is listed in the SEC filing as $75 million, of which approximately $62 million has been sold.

While more than half of the websites in the survey are using Microsoft web server software, relatively few of these are active sites. Discounting link farms, domain holding pages and other automatically generated content, Microsoft accounts for only 7.3% of all active sites, while Apache leads with 44.9%, and nginx follows with 20.7%. Microsoft's active sites share has never exceeded Apache's, and ever since it peaked at 38% in early 2009, it has experienced a general decline.

Believe it or not, Purism's Librem 5 security and privacy-focused smartphone has been successfully crowdfunded a few hours ago when it reached and even passed its goal of $1.5 million, with 13 days left.

As companies continue to violate our privacy, such as Microsoft with the latest version of Skype for iOS and Android, we slowly become desensitized to it. In other words, as time marches on, people slowly become more and more accepting of being spied on. This is tragic, as our private information has value, and many will simply turn it over in exchange for a free service or other nonsense.

Purism, the social purpose corporation which designs and produces popular privacy conscious hardware and software, has reached its $1.5 million crowdfunding goal to create the world’s first encrypted, open smartphone ecosystem that gives users complete device control, the Librem 5. After amassing incredible support from GNU/Linux enthusiasts and the Free/Open-Source community at large, forging partnerships with KDE and the GNOME Foundation in the process, Purism plans to use the remaining two weeks of the campaign to push for its stretch goals and start working on the next steps for bringing the phone to market.

Linux smartphone Librem 5 has met its $1.5 million crowdfunding goal with 2 weeks left in the campaign. With this campaign, Purism aims to create the world’s first encrypted, open smartphone ecosystem that brings total control to the users. Reaching this goal ahead of schedule will help the people behind the project accelerate the production of the final product.

The security-conscious US-based Linux laptop vendor has raised the full $1.5 million target it sought. The money will be used to help fund the development and manufacture of a 5-inch privacy-focused smartphone, dubbed the ‘Librem 5’.

In a series of tweets, Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore has revealed that the software giant is no longer developing new features or hardware for Windows 10 Mobile. While Windows Phone fans had hoped Microsoft would update the platform with new features, it’s now clear the operating system has been placed into servicing mode, with just bug fixes and security updates for existing users.

“Of course we'll continue to support the platform.. bug fixes, security updates,” says Belfiore. “But building new features/hw aren't the focus.” During the recent Windows 10 Fall Creators Update development phase, it has been obvious Microsoft is no longer working on the mobile experience. The software maker branched its development process into “feature2,” leaving Windows Phone fans disappointed.

Ever since Satya Nadella took the helm at Microsoft in 2014, his PR people have been grooming him to be an Inspiration Thought Leader, preaching Transformation to the TED Talk classes. This took another step with the global launch of his book Hit Refresh, a "masterpiece" of how to scale up the "growth mindset”. [must-read]

Whether this therapeutic Davos-speak is helpful to Microsoft or not remains to be seen - but some things at the company never change. Like answering big strategic questions, and the endless in-fighting that sees products snuffed out.

Microsoft has explained how a cascading series of cockups left some of its Northern European Azure customers without access to services for nearly seven hours.

On September 29, the sounds of "Sacré bleu!" "Scheisse!" and "What are the bastards up to now?" were, we're guessing, heard from Redmond's Euro clients after key systems went down between 1327 and 2015 UTC. Virtual Machines, Cloud Services, Azure Backup, App Services and Web Apps, Azure Cache, Azure Monitor, Azure Functions, Time Series Insights, Stream Analytics, HDInsight, Data Factory and Azure Scheduler, and Azure Site Recovery were all titsup.

The problems started when one of Microsoft's data centers was carrying out routine maintenance on fire extinguishing systems, and the workmen accidentally set them off. This released fire suppression gas, and triggered a shutdown of the air con to avoid feeding oxygen to any flames and cut the risk of an inferno spreading via conduits. This lack of cooling, though, knackered nearby powered-up machines, bringing down a "storage scale unit."

Neither does it appear to be Google's Chrome OS, which tends to be under-represented in NetMarketShare and StatCounter desktop operating system numbers, being counted as Linux. Mind you, that would be fair, since Chrome OS is based on Linux.

PipeWire is a free and open source application created by Wim Taymans who works as the Principal Engineer at Red Hat and is the co-creator of the GStreamer multimedia framework.

It has been built from scratch with a particular focus on supporting Wayland and Flatpak in a bid to modernize audio and video processing. This includes support for single frame screenshots, screen capture, local desktop recording to video, and maybe even native casting of Wayland desktops to TVs and Monitors!

Munich's administration is investigating how long it would take and how much it would cost to build a Windows 10 client for use by the city's employees. Once this work is complete, the council will vote again in November on whether this Windows client should replace LiMux, a custom version of the Linux-based OS Ubuntu, across the authority from 2021.

The FSFE's Kirschner said that any switch to Exchange should not take place without the council's explicit approval.

Kirschner said that councillors had agreed in February to hold off on any actions to scale back the use of open-source software until the costs of doing so were known.

Indian companies increasingly looking at startups to fulfil their need for software solutions for enterprises on the cloud, the Bengaluru-based company is delivering and managing private cloud-based IT infrastructure, helping mid-sized organisations attain IT transformation swiftly, at less than half the cost.

The operation was deemed necessary because, as Facebook engineering director Adam Wolff put it on Friday, the social network had failed to convince the developer community that its BSD + Patents license was compatible with open source requirements.

GraphQL, which exists as a specification that's available for implementation, has also been revised. The specification has been put under the Open Web Foundation Agreement (OWFa) v1.0 and Facebook's GraphQL implementation is now available under the MIT license.

Over the course of past two years, we’ve been telling you how Microsoft is trying hard to earn the appreciation of open source developers by either contributing to open source software or sharing its own code on GitHub. These moves have faced skepticism from us as well. Just yesterday, at its Ignite conference, Microsoft launched SQL Server 2017 for Linux as well.

When open source enthusiasts come across headlines like “Windows Subsystem For Linux (WSL) will let you run Linux distros as well,” their doubts don’t remain baseless. In the past, Microsoft’s ex-CEO Steve Ballmer had slammed Linux as a “cancer.” So, is Microsoft totally changed? Are its efforts like WSL helping open source software?

Microsoft, a company whose ex-CEO famously slammed Linux as a "cancer", has a new found "love" for open source software, having last month released its hell-over-freezing subsystem that lets Windows 10 users run various GNU/Linux distros and software.

Unsurprisingly, some are sceptical about Microsoft's new-found enthusiasm for Linux and open source software, including free software advocate, and founder of GNU OS Richard Stallman.

Speaking to Tech Republic, he said Microsoft's decision to build a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) amounts to an attempt to extinguish free, open source software.

"It certainly looks that way. But it won't be so easy to extinguish us, because our reasons for using and advancing free software are not limited to practical convenience," he said.

"We want freedom. As a way to use computers in freedom, Windows is a non-starter."

"The aim of the free software movement is to free users from freedom-denying proprietary programs and systems, such as Windows. Making a non-free system, such Windows or macOS or iOS or ChromeOS or Android, more convenient is a step backward in the campaign for freedom."

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Why open source could be IBM's key to future success in the cloud

Do those same developers need IBM? Developers certainly benefit from IBM's investments in open source, but it's not as clear that those same developers have much to gain from IBM's cloud. Google, for example, has done a stellar job open sourcing code like TensorFlow and Kubernetes that feeds naturally into running related workloads on Google Cloud Platform. Aside from touting its Java bonafides, however, IBM has yet to demonstrate that developers get significant benefits for modern workloads on its cloud.
That's IBM's big challenge: Translating its open source expertise into real, differentiated value for developers on its cloud.

Top 8 Debian-Based Distros

Most people tend to forget that despite Ubuntu's success over the years, it's still just a distro based on another distro - Debian. Debian on its own, however, isn't really well suited for newer users...hence the explosion of distros based on Debian over the recent years. There are lot of great choices for Linux users. Which one is best for you?

Compact, rugged IoT gateway offers dual GbE with PoE

Inforce has launched a $250 “Inforce 6320” IoT gateway that runs Linux on a quad -A53 Snapdragon 410, and offers WiFi, BT, GPS, HDMI, USB, -30 to 85°C support, and dual GbE ports with PoE.
Inforce Computing’s $250 Inforce 6320 is a compact (170 x 95 x 42mm) IoT gateway that runs Ubuntu Core (Snappy) and Debian on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 410E. Inforce promises “periodic upstream kernel based BSP releases [that] include in-depth documentation along with a host of royalty-free software.” The Debian BSP includes LXDE, drivers for all available interfaces, as and access to the Inforce TechWeb tech support services.